Critique this quiet rig

[brikis98]

Uses: gaming, movies, music, web browsing, programming, photo editing
Budget: around $700
Country: US
Brand preference: none
Reusable parts: monitor, dvd-rw, keyboard, mouse, speakers + some parts in "the system so far" section at the end
Similar threads: yup, that's how I got the initial ideas for this
Overclocking: yup, plan on a moderate OC of the CPU

The system so far

Antec P182: I have this beauty already, fitted with 3 low speed 120mm Yate Loon fans.
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L: $100.
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400: $225
Corsair XMS2 2x1GB DDR2 800: $30
Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme: $56
Scythe SFF21D 120mm S-Flex: $15
Corsair HX520: $80
MSI x1900xtx: I have this now. I'll upgrade once something comes out that can handle crysis at 1080p.
Accelero S1 VGA cooler: the MSI vga cooler is loud as hell, so I have this thing to replace it.
Samsung Spinpoint T Series 500gb: $110

Total: $616

Questions

1. Any reason to go with the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R? I guess it supports DDR3, but I'm not sure that's worth an extra $60.
2. Any reason to go with faster RAM or a different brand?
3. With two 120mm fans blowing on it (rear and top exhaust), would I be able to run that HSF passively or should I get a 120mm Yate Loon fan to stick directly on it?

Update

* Changed the Corsair hx620 to the hx520
* Added the Scythe SFF21D 120mm S-flex fan to cool the Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: brikis98
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L: $100.

Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme: $56

Questions

1. Any reason to go with the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R? I guess it supports DDR3, but I'm not sure that's worth an extra $60.
2. Any reason to go with faster RAM or a different brand?
3. With two 120mm fans blowing on it (rear and top exhaust), would I be able to run that HSF passively or should I get a 120mm Yate Loon fan to stick directly on it?

I wouldn't go with the P35C version, but I would go with the P35-DS3R, because I likes the RAID options. RAID issues aside, it allows for the addition of a hot-swap drive rack.

The DDR2 800 is fine.

Personally I don't like the stand-up type HS. They may benchmark great, but I want a HS that also blows down on other MB components to help keep them cool as well.
And no, the rear 120's won't be enough to effectively pull heat off your HS.

 

[MarcVenice]

You could just buy a tuniq tower, for less money, or even an arctic freezer 7 pro. That's what I have, with a p182, it's deadquiet. Your videocard is going to be the loudest component, and you don't need 620 watts of power. Step it down to a 520hx instead, or even a 450vx, and with the money saved, you can perhaps buy a ATI HD3870 ?

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: brikis98
Accelero S1 VGA cooler: the MSI vga cooler is loud as hell, so I have this thing to replace it.

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Your videocard is going to be the loudest component,

The passive Accelero S1 should keep his 1900XTX pretty quiet.

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: Blain
I wouldn't go with the P35C version, but I would go with the P35-DS3R, because I likes the RAID options. RAID issues aside, it allows for the addition of a hot-swap drive rack.

I don't think I'll be using RAID for anything. My setup has always been a single quiet & fast internal HD which is periodically backed up to a large, slow & cheap external HD. Really cheap and in my experience, very effective at keeping the data safe & portable. Perhaps I could setup similar with RAID 1, but then I'd need to identical internal HD's...

Originally posted by: Blain
Personally I don't like the stand-up type HS. They may benchmark great, but I want a HS that also blows down on other MB components to help keep them cool as well.
And no, the rear 120's won't be enough to effectively pull heat off your HS.

all the benchmarks I've seen show the Thermalright HSF as by far the most effective & quiet air cooling option. got any benchmarks to show that the type of HSF you suggest is better?

 

[MegaVovaN]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
You could just buy a tuniq tower, for less money, or even an arctic freezer 7 pro. That's what I have, with a p182, it's deadquiet. Your videocard is going to be the loudest component, and you don't need 620 watts of power. Step it down to a 520hx instead, or even a 450vx, and with the money saved, you can perhaps buy a ATI HD3870 ?

He wants 620 so he can just plug in new video card. 3870 probably won't handle Crysis at 1920x1080.

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
You could just buy a tuniq tower, for less money, or even an arctic freezer 7 pro. That's what I have, with a p182, it's deadquiet. Your videocard is going to be the loudest component, and you don't need 620 watts of power. Step it down to a 520hx instead, or even a 450vx, and with the money saved, you can perhaps buy a ATI HD3870 ?

i'll consider the tuniq tower, although the price difference is small (~$10), so maybe I'll go with the Thermalright, which is def. top of the line. As for Arctic freezer 7, I have the Arctic Freezer 64 pro now and am NOT impressed. the 92mm fan at full blast is pretty loud and the cooling performance isn't good enough under load to allow you to run the fan at quieter settings.

as for the PSU, i prefer something a bit more than i need. since the video card i want hasn't been released yet, i have no idea what kind of power requirements it'll have. on top of that, future upgrades will likely be more power hungry too, so I may as well have a PSU that can handle that.

 

[Roguestar]

I agree with the 520HX. Cheaper and still good enough for SLI should you so desire. Get cheaper RAM; there's a thread in Hot Deals at the moment for 4GB for ~$60 if I recall correctly.

 

[MarcVenice]

Even newer videocards, like the HD3870 X2 and the 9800gx2 won't require 620w of power, or 40a or more on the 12v rail. Your money though. As for the tuniq, it's more then 10$ cheaper, coz you also have to buy a seperate fan for the Thermalright , like an s-flex or so, which is gonna cost ya 15$. And yes, at full blast, the Freezer 64 pro is nowhere near quiet, I know all about it. But it only happens during gaming, for brief periods of time, so I'm not to bothered, besides, all fans at full speed will make a wooshing sound. The only solution would be a fan that revs up only as hard as it has to, and then remains at that speed, unlike the freezer 64 pro, which revs up to full speeds, revs down, etc etc.

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
I agree with the 520HX. Cheaper and still good enough for SLI should you so desire. Get cheaper RAM; there's a thread in Hot Deals at the moment for 4GB for ~$60 if I recall correctly.

i'll def. look around for hotter deals, but since i'm not running a 64 bit OS, wouldn't 4gb be a waste?

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Even newer videocards, like the HD3870 X2 and the 9800gx2 won't require 620w of power, or 40a or more on the 12v rail. Your money though. As for the tuniq, it's more then 10$ cheaper, coz you also have to buy a seperate fan for the Thermalright , like an s-flex or so, which is gonna cost ya 15$. And yes, at full blast, the Freezer 64 pro is nowhere near quiet, I know all about it. But it only happens during gaming, for brief periods of time, so I'm not to bothered, besides, all fans at full speed will make a wooshing sound. The only solution would be a fan that revs up only as hard as it has to, and then remains at that speed, unlike the freezer 64 pro, which revs up to full speeds, revs down, etc etc.

you may be right on both counts. i'll take some time to look around for good deals on the tuniq tower and the 520.

 

[MarcVenice]

Good, that's the least I ask of you, since you are asking for advice As for the 4gb question, even when running a 32bit OS, you will see over 3gb, so you are only 'wasting' roughly 750mb of ram. Since it's so cheap, and I bet you'll want to upgrade to Vista 64x sooner or later, it's not really that big of a deal if you ask me.

 

[Sheninat0r]

I'm not so sure about the passive S1 - make sure you have enough airflow over it, or it'll overheat http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page4.html

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: brikis98

Originally posted by: Roguestar
I agree with the 520HX. Cheaper and still good enough for SLI should you so desire. Get cheaper RAM; there's a thread in Hot Deals at the moment for 4GB for ~$60 if I recall correctly.

i'll def. look around for hotter deals, but since i'm not running a 64 bit OS, wouldn't 4gb be a waste?

You'll still see around 3.25GB, which is a lot more than 2GB as far as new games are concerned.

 

[CptCrunch]

What about a different case, the CM 690 is a great case and very quiet, and has the options for 120mm and 140mm fans. Also, you can get 5GB of ram right now for about 2-3AR (HP deals) which comes with the Micron D9 chips and while they are ddr2-667 they do OC well (I have some and can confirm this). Also, for 4GB of ram, you'll need a 64-bit OS or it will not see anything over 3GB.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: brikis98

Originally posted by: Blain
I wouldn't go with the P35C version, but I would go with the P35-DS3R, because I likes the RAID options. RAID issues aside, it allows for the addition of a hot-swap drive rack.

I don't think I'll be using RAID for anything. My setup has always been a single quiet & fast internal HD which is periodically backed up to a large, slow & cheap external HD. Really cheap and in my experience, very effective at keeping the data safe & portable. Perhaps I could setup similar with RAID 1, but then I'd need to identical internal HD's...

Originally posted by: Blain
Personally I don't like the stand-up type HS. They may benchmark great, but I want a HS that also blows down on other MB components to help keep them cool as well.
And no, the rear 120's won't be enough to effectively pull heat off your HS.

all the benchmarks I've seen show the Thermalright HSF as by far the most effective & quiet air cooling option. got any benchmarks to show that the type of HSF you suggest is better?

Read slower and comprehend more.

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: Blain

Read slower and comprehend more.

i assume you're referring to me asking for benchmarks of heatsinks that "blow down"... despite you saying that they don't benchmark as well as the stand-up type. however, i would like to see proof that "blowing down" has any impact positive impact on the CPU, MB or other components as you claim. that is, if you can't measure it, then I don't see how you can claim it's wortwhile...

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: CptCrunch
What about a different case, the CM 690 is a great case and very quiet, and has the options for 120mm and 140mm fans. Also, you can get 5GB of ram right now for about 2-3AR (HP deals) which comes with the Micron D9 chips and while they are ddr2-667 they do OC well (I have some and can confirm this). Also, for 4GB of ram, you'll need a 64-bit OS or it will not see anything over 3GB.

i already own the case and i think it does a very decent job of being quiet and maintaining good air flow, so I see no point in upgrading.

as for RAM, i won't be going to a 64 bit OS any time soon, so anything over ~3gb is a waste. i might get 2x2gb if I spot a very good deal, but otherwise, 2x1gb will be plenty.

 

[riversend3]

Brikis,
I am certainly no expert, but my setup is similar to what you are working on. I built it about 4-5 months ago and am very happy with, both performance and noise levels, and it looks like your noise levels will be even lower. I have the P182, DS3L, an E6750 (w/stock cooler), an MSI 8600GTS (passively cooled model), the original fans that came with the case, an HX520, 2GB of OCZ DDR2 800, and a 500GB Seagate drive (which is probably noisier than your Samsung).

The machine works fine for what I want, and I don't do any bleeding edge gaming. I wanted a quiet graphics card, and did not need anything other than mediocre performance, which is what I got (although some would say it is much worse than mediocre). The system runs great, and if you don't care about RAID (I don't), then this MB should do fine. I haven't started any OC yet (no time), but will at some point. So far there are no stability issues whatsoever, although I can't say if a hotter running graphics card would cause any problems. I doubt it, particularly since you aren't loading up with a ton of extra hard drives etc.

I installed Vista Home Premium (32bit) at the start, and the system has been stable as a rock ever since. The board seems solid, and load times for everything seem pretty good to me (subjective of course, I don't care if it is a few seconds slower here or there). Primary game is Medieval 2, and it is at 1680 x 1050 with almost, if not all, the settings on highest. I would think that down the road with the newer cards you will be able to find a DX10 part for a decent price with passive cooling that will work fine.

The only problem I had was with the case, the front USB slots snapped, but I had a replacement part from them, and installed five days later.

Hope this helps. I think you've got some pretty good capability there for pretty cheap, and upgradeable to boot.

RE3

 

[ZoNtO]

Get Scythe Slipstream 120mm fans instead of the s-flex, and use Tuniq TX-2 for your thermal compound. In my silent rig I'm running a Q6700 quad passive off of a Scythe Ninja Mini and Tuniq tx2 and the sucker is cooled very well.

I would get a newer card myself for video, unless you already have the one you listed.

 

[Tullphan]

Originally posted by: ZoNtO
Get Scythe Slipstream 120mm fans instead of the s-flex, and use Tuniq TX-2 for your thermal compound. In my silent rig I'm running a Q6700 quad passive off of a Scythe Ninja Mini and Tuniq tx2 and the sucker is cooled very well.

What about the SilenX IXP-74-17 Ixtrema Pro...14dBA 72CFM? Kinda pricey, though.

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: Tullphan

Originally posted by: ZoNtO
Get Scythe Slipstream 120mm fans instead of the s-flex, and use Tuniq TX-2 for your thermal compound. In my silent rig I'm running a Q6700 quad passive off of a Scythe Ninja Mini and Tuniq tx2 and the sucker is cooled very well.

What about the SilenX IXP-74-17 Ixtrema Pro...14dBA 72CFM? Kinda pricey, though.

the specs are awfully nice, but who knows how truthful they are. i tend to go by the recommendations on silentpcreview, especially their recommended fan list. as the s-flex is on there and as anandtech used that in their own testing of the ultra 120, it seems like a very decent choice.